Foolscap

“ Fool, fōōl, n. crushed fruit scalded or stewed, mixed with cream and sugar, as 'gooseberry fool.' [Prob. a use of preceding suggested by trifle.]
Foolscap, fōōlz′kap, n. a long folio writing or printing paper, varying in size (17×131⁄2 in., 163⁄4×131⁄2 in., &c.) , so called from having originally borne the water-mark of a fool's cap and bells.
Foot, foot, n. that part of its body on which an animal stands or walks (having in man 26 bones) : the lower part or base: a measure=12 in., (orig.) the length of a man's foot: foot-soldiers: a division of a line of poetry:—pl. ”

“ Jack MacKenzie continued to pour instructions into my ear for the venturesome life on which I had entered. "The lad's a fool, only a fool," he said, still harping on Louis, "and mind you answer the fool according to his folly!"
"Most men are fools first, and then knaves, knaves because they have been fools," I returned to my uncle, "and I fancy Laplante has graduated from the fool stage by this time, and is a full diploma knave!" ”

“ For the first time she rose erect, and looked him in the face.
‘A fool is a fool,’ she said, ‘be he ne’er so brave. Bear that in mind when next you go to look into the dark places. So ye dared? And what frighted ye?’
‘It was a sound came up from the well. I thought it laughed.’
‘And might it not laugh, hugging its secret all these years? Mayhap it was that laugh killed Fulk. A was found dead there, his head hanging over the well-rim. There were things in his eyes—things seen in the black under water as he lay gasping out his soul. God give him mercy!’
Brion stood silent a minute. ”

“ The Fool sat very still awhile.
'Speak clearer,' he muttered; then of a sudden: 'What wouldst ask of me?'
'Ah! dear,' sighed Bembo; 'only that thou wouldst justify thyself of this new compact of ours.'
'I am clean—as thou readest love. Who but God would consort with Folly? The Fool is cursed to virginity.'
'Cicada, dear, but there is no Chastity without Temperance.'
The Fool tore himself away, and slunk crouching back upon the grass. ”

“ THE FOOL BY RIGHT OF OFFICE. When Erasmus praised Folly, it was only by making Folly advocate her own cause. After all, her pleading neither recommends her cause, nor says much for the wit of the pleader. Folly, in the abstract, has been denounced alike by Scripture and ancient heathen sages. “All men are fools,” was once a received text. Over the text, some have laughed, some have cried, and upon it, or its equivalent, divines have preached sermons now mirthful now melancholy. “If I wish to look at a fool,” says Seneca modestly, “I have not far to go. I have only to look in a mirror.” ”

“ Because, my dear fellow, you understand one must never be singular. If one's lot is cast amongst fools, it is necessary to study folly. I shall, perhaps, find myself one day called out by some hare-brained scamp, who has no more real cause of quarrel with me than you have with Beauchamp; he may take me to task for some foolish trifle or other, he will send his seconds, or will insult me in some public place, and I suppose I am expected to kill him for all that. ”

“ The fool hath but a narrow world of conventions, and everything outside it is to him abnormal. His head is a drumstick to produce hollow sounds within a blank little area. For my part, I never hear one holding the great up to ridicule without thinking, There is wasted a good stone-cutter of epitaphs.”
“Eh bien, monsieur! but I have been accustomed to leave the study of philosophy to my lackeys.”
He spoke in a lofty manner, waving his hand at me; and he took snuff from a battered wooden box, and flipped his fingers to his thumb afterwards as if he were scattering largesse of fragrance. ”

“ For jest and earnest, use and sport, Here fools abound of every sort. The sage may here find Wisdom's rules, And Folly learn the ways of fools. Dolts rich and poor my verse doth strike, The bad find badness, like finds like. A cap on many a one I fit, Who fain to wear it would omit, Were I to mention him by name, "I know you not," he would exclaim. The "Narrenschiff" is full of indications of the manners of the day, and the woodcuts are a curious study of its costumes. ”

“ May we not reasonably conclude that there was once considerable dignity attached to the office of fool, seeing that many ancient families bore the insignia of fools in their arms? The chief of these was the family of Briesach, long54 since extinct; and indeed I only know one house now existing whose crest seems to intimate some connection with the old jester, or some love of “short, brilliant folly.” I allude to the House of Orford (Walpole) . The crest is a male bust, on whose head is the old official fool’s cap, rising from a coronet. ”

“ Take him, thou, to be valet to thy temperance!" by which gibe he seeks to cover a gracious act. And, lo! I have a Fool for servant, a most notable Fool and auxiliary, who, having sworn himself to abstinence, would unplug and sink to the bottomless abyss every floating hogshead. In sooth the good soul is my shadow, and so they call him. "Well," says he, "so be it. But what sort of fool art thou, to cast a fool for shadow?" "Why, look," says I, for it was sunset on the grass—"at least not so great a fool as thou." "That may well be," says he, "for you do not serve Messer Bembo." ”

“ The relation of fool and master, not a relation of the period of the play, but of a much later age, is very distinctly marked. Lear strikes a gentleman, only for chiding Lear’s fool; but the King keeps a whip for the latter, to be used when the jester’s truths smacked rudely, or were thrust forward unnecessarily. And these truths are occasionally of the very roughest quality, as, for instance, when the fool tells Lear,91 that he had given away all his titles save “fool,”—the one he was born with. ”

“ Cap'n Sproul looked him up and down for many minutes and then tucked the smutty ash-stick under the stove.
"Well, what insane horsepittle did you get out of by crawlin' through the keyhole?" he demanded.
"Oh, I am not insane," remonstrated the thin man. "It is always easy for fools in this world to blat that insult when a man announces something that they don't understand. A man that knows enough to be selectman of Smyrna hadn't ought to be a fool. ”

“ Fool-Killer, please don't kill little Kerner. Why can't you go back South and kill Congressmen and clay-eaters and let us alone? Why don't you go up on Fifth Avenue and kill millionaires that keep their money locked up and won't let young fools marry because one of 'em lives on the wrong street? Come and have a drink, Jesse. Will you never get on to your job?"
"Do you know this girl that your friend has made himself a fool about?" asked the Fool-Killer.
"I have the honor," said I, "and that's why I called Kerner a fool. He is a fool because he has waited so long before marrying her. ”

“ It ended in the editor of a journal proposing to the fool that he should undertake their reviewing column.
And the fool fell to criticising everything and every one, without in the least changing his manner, or his exclamations.
Now he, who once declaimed against authorities, is himself an authority, and the young men venerate him, and fear him.
And what else can they do, poor young men? Though one ought not, as a general rule, to venerate any one . . . but in this case, if one didn't venerate him, one would find oneself quite behind the times!
Fools have a good time among cowards. ”

“ Not another individual prepared to avoid the tempest. Each man waited to see the fools drenched, and every man there was, in two minutes, wet to the very skin.
When the sun re-appeared, the philosopher walked out into the market-place. The thoroughly-soaked idiots, observing his comfortable condition, hailed the good man with the epithet of “fool.” They pelted him with sticks and stones, tore his gown, plucked his beard, and loaded him with foul terms that would have twisted the jaw of Aristophanes. ”

“ Great folly, to be sure, but folly is wisdom’s catspaw. The gods know the value of gilding a fool’s eyes. These Asphandars and Pharavardins, these pseudonyms and Allobroxes (which last, by the way, meant the Province of Faissigny) , were only so much harlequin tinsel irradiating the body of a stern purpose. Behind all the glittering foppery was existent a very resolute and far-reaching design—one no less than the universal decentralisation of governments, and the qualification of the world-citizen. It was no small ambition, perhaps, that of aspiring to the generalship of the Illuminati. ”

“ I think I have read somewhere that a man couldn't be a hero unless he were also a fool."
Meryl got up, and moved behind her companion's chair that she might not see the glisten in her eyes, for the longing for that one Fool-Hero who had brought such sudden desolation in her heart. Placing her hands on the back of it, she leaned over her affectionately and said, "It doesn't carry men only, that ship of yours: some of the fools are women. ”

“ It was only last night that fellow, Hunter, called me an old fool in my own kitchen here. He wouldn’t have called me a fool a fortnight ago; ’twas I called him fool then, and last night he called me old fool; what do you think of that?—the man that beat Tom of Hopton, to be called, not only a fool, but an old fool; and I hadn’t heart, with one blow of this here fist into his face, to send his head ringing against the wall; for when a man’s pocket is low, do you see, his heart ain’t much higher; but it is of no use talking, something must be done. ”

“ You are indefatigable."
"Pardon me," said Meyer yawning; "we are exceedingly tired. But as I have been constantly reminding my comrades,—almost to the point of boredom,—we are a pack of fools and must pay for our folly by the inconvenience of a night in the snow."
"If you are fools," said Karl, "I am the king of fools. But at least there is something noble in your folly, if it leads you from warmth and shelter to a hopeless search over a snow-bound countryside." ”

“ They dared not speak without thinking, which, time out of mind, has been the privilege of your fool; and if their wit offended against good manners, they ran good chance of a whipping. It was probably to hold the freedom of the sprightly corporation in check that Philander von Sittewald invented and described the Hell of Fools, which he is supposed to have visited. The locality, we are told, was like the cellar of a palace, which was crowded with Zanies, condemned to hear for ever, and to burst with envy at, each other’s jokes. The retribution and the sarcasm are equally severe. ”

“ At Courts where several fools were retained, the master of his company felt as much above his followers as an old Drury tragedian above a Dunstable actor. He strutted like a peacock, and thought himself an elephant, when he was only an ass. There was great diversity, however, among them. Ordinarily, a clever lord preferred a clever fool, and the dull lord, who could neither read nor write, found the same sort of retainer a necessity. ”

“ Before I have done you shall confess, between laughter and tears, that he is of the very essence of life, that you have known him all your days though you never recognised him till now, and that you would as soon go without Hamlet as miss him.’
The Fool in King Lear has been so favourite a subject with good critics that I will confine myself to one or two points on which a difference of opinion is possible. To suppose that the Fool is, like many a domestic fool at that time, a perfectly sane man pretending to be half-witted, is surely a most prosaic blunder. ”

“ But, as far as it signifies this dramatic fool, Flögel’s derivation of it, from the old Frank word Vis (phiz) , a face, a mask, may be accepted. Visdase, another old word for fool, is derived by Ménage from “Vis d’âne” (ass-face) , and Vizard is a known term amongst ourselves for the mask or counterfeit representation, usually comic, of a face.
This derivation seems more satisfactory than that given by Upton, who tells us that “Old Vice was a droll character in our old plays, accoutred with a long coat, a cap, a pair of ass’s ears, and a dagger of lath. ”

“ My life and reputation are of infinitely more importance than yours. Men of sense have to consider these things. Only fools argue with swords. What a miserable self-confession! You had better call yourself a fool at once.”
“Well, I’m not sure but you are right.”
“Then, if you see it, you are no fool. No more am I. If you admit that, you admit also that you are only withholding from me information which I can, with a little trouble, procure elsewhere. You really may as well tell me what you have done with M. Saint-Péray.” ”

“ True, a fool must live by his folly as a wise man by his wisdom; but then there was a quality of selection in all things. As becoming as a jack-pudding at a funeral was Caron in San Lorenzo at this deadly pass. ”

“ Ecclesiastes says in his first chapter, "The number of fools is infinite;" and when he calls it infinite, does he not seem to comprehend all men, unless it be some few whom yet 'tis a question whether any man ever saw? But more ingeniously does Jeremiah in his tenth chapter confess it, saying, "Every man is made a fool through his own wisdom;" attributing wisdom to God alone and leaving folly to all men else, and again, "Let not man glory in his wisdom." ”

“ Some of this gentry, on whom their uncultivated betters depended for amusement, appear to have been a species of mountebanks, often performing tricks which are only now accomplished by parti-coloured “artists” in equestrian circles. The fool who could most wonderfully distort his body, squint most horribly, turn his face to his back, and bend himself as if he were made of nothing but one wonderful series of joints,—such a fool was accounted next in merit to his witty cousin. ”

“ In the next place, there are so many sorts of fools, such an infinite variety of fools, and so hard it is to know the worst of the kind, that I am obliged to say, no fool, ladies, at all, no kind of fool; whether a mad fool or a sober fool, a wise fool or a silly fool, take anything but a fool; nay, be anything, be even an old maid, the worst of nature’s curses, rather than take up with a fool. ”